


but that will never be enough

by BittersweetDreamer



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 11:25:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15266472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BittersweetDreamer/pseuds/BittersweetDreamer
Summary: -Modern AU-“And you smiled at me then like you’re smiling at me now”. Her fingers are tracing the outline of his mouth. They are pale and slender, decorated by old wounds, the battle scars from her childhood. Jon is familiar with the countless, silver lines. It’s the silver ring that’s a stranger. The ring and the man that put it there.





	but that will never be enough

“I met you fifteen years ago, on this date. Did you know that? My father had never even spoken of you before breakfast that morning. In the same sentence he told us we had a cousin Jon and that he was coming to live with us indefinitely. Definitely. Indefinitely. To be honest I don’t quite understand the difference between those two words. Even now.” 

Arya has a freshly lit cigarette in her left hand and a nearly empty drink in her right. Her muddied dress and Jon are both trailing behind her. They are deep in the woods behind Arya’s house. Just a couple of hundred feet from the heart of it. Jon can no longer hear the talk of strangers or the cries of children. He can hear only Arya. He hears the shallow, uneven sounds of her inhales and exhales, the intake of smoke compromising the predictable pattern of her breathing. He hears the crinkling of leaves, the way they momentarily crush beneath the pressure of her light footsteps, he hears how they lay in jigsaw pieces on the ground, becoming permanent crumpled fragments even after she’s gone.

The moon sleeps above them, illuminating their way in the absence of stars. It’s light radiates off an old, oak like a cheap motels vacancy sign and Jon watches Arya embrace the enormous, dying tree as if it were a piece of floating driftwood and she were drowning.

It was him that first lead her back here, on a humid August night nearly a decade ago, but it’s he who follows her now. She kicks off her shoes and sits beneath the trees elongated branches, Jon sits beside her, snatching the cigarette to take a final puff before extinguishing it on the bottom of his shoe.

This is the first time all night Jon has finally gotten the chance to be alone with Arya. To even look at her for that matter, to really look at her. Hours ago, her long hair had been combed and tied up but here in the woods with just Jon and the moon as witnesses her hair is a tangled mess. Wild and beautiful. Like the multicolored flowers that grew in these woods. The ones Jon used to pluck and tie into her hair. The ones that withered away weeks ago.

Jon is still leaning against the tree but with fluttering eyelids Arya has slid down to lay her head on the ground. With the earth as her pillow and the darkness as her blanket Jon wonders if she might be dreaming. His fingers find their way into the dark strands of her hair and she makes a satisfied moan as they graze her scalp. Five years have passed since he’s heard her make that noise. Three years since he’s laid his hands upon her.

He knows he shouldn’t but he touches the skin above her collarbone next. It is soft and naked to his fingertips. With every passing second of contact, her chest rises and falls faster. Every stroke across her breast bone is a reminder of what loving her used to feel like, still feels like. An unparalleled warmth. And every gaze that wanders passed it, is a reminder of why he shouldn’t love her like that still. He tries to avoid the stiff material that presses tightly against her skin, but curiosity and jealousy lead him to palm the ivory lace that covers her breasts. She sighs like a lover and Jon feels himself growing hard.

“Arya?” Her name tumbles out of Jon’s lips, a verbal reflex to his physical arousal.

“You were wearing a blue shirt that day. It had a giant sailboat on the back and one of those ridiculously useless pockets on the front. I’d say that shirt fit you then about as much as this dress fits me now” she props up one elbow, her hair brushing against his thigh and stares ahead, straight ahead, into the infinity. He reaches out and strokes her cheek, Arya turns her eyes on him. She sits up, and faces Jon, reaching into the jacket of his suit for another cigarette and lighter.

“Your eyes were red, the way they do when you can’t stop crying, and I remember thinking I’d never seen anyone so sad and miserable. And it made me feel sad and miserable. And all I wanted to do was say something or do something to make you smile”.

“So that magic show, those jokes, you dancing, that was for me?” Jon‘s laughing and the sound feels foreign in his throat.

“Well for this, yes” Arya’s chuckling along with him. “And you smiled at me then like you’re smiling at me now”. Her fingers are tracing the outline of his mouth. They are pale and slender, decorated by old wounds, the battle scars from her childhood. Jon is familiar with the countless, silver lines, he has kissed them all. It’s the silver ring that’s a stranger. The ring and the man that put it there. Jon has trouble remembering why he’s here.

Arya climbs into his lap, replacing her fingers with her lips and kisses him gently. He has trouble remembering why he wasn’t here sooner.

The kiss deepens, his arms wrapping around her waste, her fingers getting lost in his unruly curls. She taste like wine, trouble, menthol cigarettes and broken promises. She taste like love. The platonic, the first, the big, the one that remains.  
He has trouble remembering why he left her here at all.

His lips migrate lower, settling at the base of her neck. Jon is sure he will leave a mark. He wonders how many marks he’s already left on Arya. If they were temporary or lasting. She answers him with a whimper.

“Yes, Jon.” She quietly whines and Jon’s hands raise to her cheeks. Her eyes are watery and her lips are red from the Chianti and the scratching of Jon’s beard. She presses her forehead against his, and Jon has never missed anything so much. Has never hurt anyone so much.

“I’m sorry Arya. God, I am so sorry” what he’s apologizing for her cannot say. For allowing them to grow up as close as they did. Letting shared secrets become secret kisses and kissing cousins became more than just a foolish game they played after too much drinking. He was meant to be the responsible one, she was five years younger and just a girl of eleven when they first met. But god he had never loved anything like he loved her. Wanted anyone the way he wants her.

She was eighteen the first time he fucked her, beneath this tree. He had been gone for two years overseas, fighting in a war he didn’t believe in.

It was his uncles funeral that brought him back. Back to her and the war that he left behind.

She looked nearly the same. Maybe a little older. A little taller. A little more like a woman. It wasn’t so much her appearance that changed. It was the way she carried herself.

She looked as stiff as the black dress she wore and the grey eyes that were once full of fire and resilience were swollen and lifeless, hidden behind dark sunglasses. Despite spending her adolescence feeling like a disappointment to her mother and an embarrassment to her sister, she stands stoic between the two sobbing women, holding their hands.

It’s not until after the funeral, with the dirt piled high and the abandonment of tail lights, that Arya finally speaks to him. It’s a three word question and the same one she made two years ago. The first time he disappointed her. He would not do that now. Now he would stay.

He walks the familiar path through the woods and to the oak. With just Jon next to her, she finally mourns, howling like a lost wolf, not a lone one. When the sobbing and screaming ends she presses her lips hard against his own. It is not kisses like the ones from childhood, chaste and playful, it is heated and lustful and right and wrong and he has never kissed anyone back the way he does now. And Jon can’t find the strength or desire to stop kissing her, not when it feels like this. When she pulls down his zipper, Jon finally musters the strength to stop it. But when Arya takes off her dress, exposing her nakedness and whispers please, the strength disappears as suddenly as it comes.

He lays her down and loves her. Gently, intensely, dangerously. The only way he knows how. He kisses down her body, hovering over the place he had never allowed himself to touch before. Beneath the soft, grey material, she feels warm and wet to his fingers, compliant to his touch. He peels off the last shred of clothing and places his mouth between her thighs. Licking, sucking and kissing until she convulses, repeating his name again and again. 

She is breathless and sweaty when he looks up, the fire returning to her eyes. It’s wild and Jon doesn’t know if he will burn in the flames or melt slowly, the way snow does when being kissed by the sun. She sits astride him, guiding his cock inside her and Jon thinks it might be both.

He’s scared she will hate him when it ends. Separate where their bodies join, to leave him feeling cold and empty. The fear dies when she kisses him lazily before slumping against him. She is warm and tired and I love you spills out of her mouth as she falls asleep on his shoulder.

It is two years of this. Two years of hidden love that is displayed in the trees behind her house and in the bedroom of the small apartment he leases downtown. It is the third year when things fall apart. When he accepts what she denies, that this love they share, cannot last forever. It is when he leaves her for a second time, that she finally hates him.

“Jon.” Arya’s voice calls him back to the present. Her eyes are still grey, her cheeks are still freckled but the black dress has been replaced by a white one, a stained white one and she still looks too goddamn beautiful. He never deserved Arya. He still doesn’t. But he doesn’t know how to give her up. How to live in a world where she raises children and grows old with someone who isn’t him. “Sometimes I wish we were still kids”.

The confession falls out of Arya’s lips and Jon hates the guilt that sits upon him, the guilt of catalyzing her attainment into adulthood.

“I still had you then, I thought I would always have you”. The tears form in Arya’s eyes and Jon can’t help his selfish response. He has always been too selfish. And Arya, too forgiving.

“Don’t marry him”. She didn’t expect that, he can tell by the way her eyebrows knit together. In a different lifetime, there was a boy and girl who could read others thoughts. “Please don’t marry him”.

“Why?”

“You know why”.

“It isn’t enough. You’re the one who told me that”

“I lied. I love you Arya, how is that not enough?”

“It never was before”.

“This time it will be”.

“promise?”

“promise”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys enjoy!!!! This was a prompt from Tumblr. Any comments/ Kudos are greatly appreciated! Thank you! (:


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